“In this vast and glorious country,” Big Mother said gently, “everywhere is home.”
“Isn’t it so!” the woman said, drawing her fingers through the seeds as if in search of a silver coin. The countryside flew past the windows, woken by the first light of morning. All around them, people were asleep in their seats or pretending to be. Patiently, the young woman attempted to extract the reason for Big Mother’s visit to Bingpai (“Your sister is who, did you say? That young lady who used to sing in the teahouses?”), working like a needle beneath Big Mother’s skin. Big Mother, contemplating the sunflower husks accumulating on the floor, and thinking, in general, of the greed that propelled wars and occupations, and of the bloody excesses of civil war, opened her thermos and poured a generous cup of tea for her companion. As often happened, Big Mother Knife decided, impulsively, to adjust her strategy.
“I was pleased,” she began, “to witness the glories of land reform here in the countryside.”
“Genius!” the young woman said weightily. “Devised–no, composed!–by the Chairman himself. A program of thought that has no equal in the history of all mankind, past, present, or futuristic.”
“Indeed,” Big Mother said. They sat in thoughtful silence for a moment and then she continued, “I, myself, welcome any sacrifice to emancipate our beloved countrymen from these heinous–”
“Oh, very heinous!” the young woman whispered.
“–feudal chains. No doubt your husband, the deputy village head, has done his duty with distinction.” Big Mother reached into her coat pocket and withdrew a handful of White Rabbit candies.
“Wa!” the young woman said in astonishment.
“Please, try one. Try several. These delicacies were sent to us from the Shanghai propaganda chief himself. The flavour is delicate yet robust. Did I mention that my husband is a composer and a musician? They say his revolutionary operas have found favour with Chairman Mao himself.”
“Ah, ah,” the woman said softly.
Big Mother dropped her voice. The words seemed to come to her as if seeping out from the thirty-one notebooks in her bag, which Swirl had insisted she take to Shanghai; her sister would dispose of the love letters herself, or so Big Mother hoped. “But our Great Helmsman has always directed our affairs, in both grand and humble ways. Of course, my husband’s more modest than the most bashful ox, but he journeyed alongside our nation’s heroes all the way to Yan’an, ten thousand li! My husband played with such revolutionary fervour that his fingers were more calloused than his shoeless feet. Yes, every step he played the guqin. He had to restring the bow with horsehairs.”
“No hairs were more joyously volunteered!”
Big Mother allowed herself a smile. “I’m sure it is so.”
The young woman accepted another handful of sweets. She slipped all the pieces except one into her shirt pocket. “Your husband is from where?”
“From Hunan Province, the very cradle of the Revolution,” Big Mother said. The woman was nervously unwrapping her candy and Big Mother waited patiently for the crackling of the paper to subside. “His revolutionary name is Song of the People. He is, if you allow me, a big brute of a man. A true, modern spirit.”
“I have heard his name,” the woman said chewing daintily, the candy sticking her words together.
“The last time he came to your village was for my sister’s wedding. Actually, Wen the Dreamer and my husband are as close as brothers.”
Did she sense consternation? Had even the sunflower seeds suddenly turned cold?
“Our village would give your husband a great welcome,” the hardy young woman said. “If you could just let us know in advance so that all the necessary preparations can be made–”
“Oh no,” Big Mother said kindly. “He dislikes having a fuss made over him. As Chairman Mao so honourably says, ‘We cadres in particular must advocate diligence and frugality!’ But I’m certain he will visit, he has such great feeling for the people here, in particular, as I say, Comrade Wen the Dreamer. Please, have another candy.”
As the bus heaved on, the two women took turns pouring each other tea, sharing their dried fruit, and paying poetic tribute to their husbands, fathers and great leaders. Fourteen hours later, when the bus arrived in Shanghai, Big Mother Knife had consumed so many sunflower seeds she felt as if she could beat her wings and fly away. The young woman clasped her hands and wished her longevity, prosperity and revolutionary glory, and they stood calling to one another like traffic directors, long after the bus had emptied and filled once more. Big Mother walked home from the bus station, through the rowdy twilit streets, and the novel in her bag gave her a pleasant, illusory calm, as if she were leaving a secret meeting and the documents she carried could bring down systems, countries, lies and corruption.
Perhaps it was not the papers themselves, their secrets, that were were so explosive, but the names of the readers that must be protected. Courageous cliques, resistance fighters, spies and dreamers! She did not know why these thoughts came to her, but it was as if the very air shrouded the buildings in paranoia. How small yet heavy the notebooks felt. She began to wonder if Wen the Dreamer, during his hours of copying the Book of Records, had merged with the author or even the characters themselves, or perhaps he had transformed into something more expansive and intangible? When he finished copying, did he go back to being himself or were the very structures of his thoughts, their hue and rhythm, subtly changed? Past Beijing Road, she came to familiar streets, narrow laneways and finally the back door of their courtyard. Already she could hear a voice singing, a female colleague rehearsing with Ba Lute or perhaps just the radio, turned up wastefully high. When Big Mother entered the side wing of the house, her husband was hovering guiltily just inside the door, his shirt crookedly buttoned. He scratched his shiny head and looked at her in confused panic, blocking her entrance.
“Let me in, for heaven’s sake!” she cried.
Deflating, he folded sideways. She saw that the room was dark, that the only residual light came from the lamps outside. She set her bag down. “Did you run out of kerosene?” she asked. And then she heard it: a low trickle of sound beneath the blaring radio. She looked to Ba Lute for an explanation but he only shrugged and smiled sheepishly.
Her heart fell to her knees. A tart. A singer so operatic she needed ten radios at maximum volume to cover her cries. Grabbing the broom, Big Mother followed the sound towards the bedrooms. At the first door, she peered inside and saw her two youngest sons asleep, almost on top of each other, as if fleeing from dreams on the northern side of the bed. She pressed on to Ba Lute’s study. How did he dare? She would smash his nose, she would rip out his remaining hairs, she would…The door was closed but still the sound slid out, like water brimming from a glass. She turned the handle and pushed.
Two lamps glowed dimly on the far side of the room. She gazed in the direction of the light. Sparrow was sitting at his father’s desk, his pen poised over a long sheet of paper. There was paper, in fact, everywhere, in the armchair, on the carpet, cascading across the desk, balled-up sheets and ink-stained pages. On the record player, a disc turned.
“Have the men in this house lost their minds?” she said finally, lowering the broom.
Her son looked down and stared expectantly at the strewn pages as if they might answer on his behalf.
“Shall I leave this madhouse and return to the sane, oh yes, the marvellously sane, countryside?”
“Oh,” Sparrow said, when no one else answered. “No.”
“We have a minor, which is to say, a small and unimportant, school project,” Ba Lute said. That brute, that Song of the People, had come up behind her.